Han F. Vermeulen

Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century: Call for Papers

May 27, 2024 / , and

A transnational and interdisciplinary research project from March 2024 to December 2026

– coordinated by Han F. Vermeulen (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara), and Maria Beatrice Di Brizio (Centro di Ricerca Mobilità Diversità Inclusione sociale (MODI)–Università di Bologna)

– supported by the History of Anthropology Review (HAR), the EASA’s History of Anthropology Network (HOAN), and BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology.

Project Statement

This project focuses on ethnographic accounts from the Long Nineteenth Century, either based on fieldwork or borrowing descriptive and comparative data on “peoples and nations” from first-hand reports by travelers and other in situobservers. Adopting a widely inclusive transnational perspective, this project explores European and extra-European intellectual traditions. It envisages early ethnographic studies as a fundamental part of the history of anthropology and ethnography.

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Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century: Call for References

April 25, 2024 / , and

A transnational and interdisciplinary research project from March 2024 to December 2026

– coordinated by Han F. Vermeulen (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara), Maria Beatrice Di Brizio (Centro di Ricerca Mobilità Diversità Inclusione sociale (MODI)–Università di Bologna)

– supported by the History of Anthropology Review (HAR), the History of Anthropology Network (HOAN), and BEROSE International Encyclopedia of the Histories of Anthropology

Project Statement:

This project focuses on ethnographic accounts from the long nineteenth century, either based on fieldwork or borrowing descriptive and comparative data on “peoples and nations” from firsthand reports by travelers and other in situ observers. Adopting a widely inclusive transnational perspective, this project explores European and extra-European intellectual traditions. It envisages early ethnographic studies as a fundamental part of the history of anthropology and ethnography.

Call for Bibliographical References: Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century

In Primitive Culture, Edward B. Tylor recognized the crucial role of ethnographers, as they provided the empirical basis for the generalizations and historical reconstructions produced by a “science of culture” and vouchsafed the credibility of its data. If Primitive Culture (1871) envisaged the “ethnographer’s business” as comparative and classificatory research work, mainly conducted in the study, other essays by Tylor paid tribute to in situ observers of modern populations (Tylor 1884). After Tylor, Alfred Cort Haddon credited missionaries, early explorers, travelers, and colonial officers for their fieldwork contributions to the growth of ethnography, “the foundation on which the science of ethnology has been and is being laboriously built” (Haddon, 2nd ed. 1934: 103).

Notwithstanding these early acknowledgments, ethnographic research, particularly before the early twentieth century – whether field-based or performed in the library – has long been neglected by historians of anthropology. For example, the three editions of Haddon’s History of Anthropology (1910, 1934, 1949) focus on the theoretical development of the discipline, giving limited attention to collectors of ethnographic material. The same may be said of the majority of narratives on the history of anthropology, such as Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968) or T. H. Eriksen and F. S. Nielsen, A History of Anthropology (2nd ed. 2013).

A significant departure from this historiographical posture was made by James Urry (1973) and George W. Stocking Jr., who worked on the history of fieldwork (Stocking 1983), on the ethnographic data of British nineteenth-century ethnology (Stocking 1987), on fieldwork-based anthropology before and after World War I (Stocking 1995), and on the very notion of ethnography (Stocking 1971, 1984). More recently, Efram Sera-Shriar (2011, 2013, 2015) and Han F. Vermeulen (2015) have drawn attention to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ethnographies, while specialists exploring the history of colonial anthropology and the development of area studies have highlighted the relevance of pre-Malinowskian ethnographies based on fieldwork (Sibeud 2002; Gardner & Kenny 2016). Their significance for the disciplinary development of anthropology has been recognized by scholarly encyclopedias and reviews, notably BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology and the History of Anthropology Review (see the dossiers on early ethnographers in the section “Anthropologists and Ethnographers” of BEROSE, and articles on the history of ethnography in HAR).

Building on this expanded historiographical sensitivity to ethnography, Frederico Delgado Rosa and Han F. Vermeulen (2022a-c) prepared a selective bibliography of 365 ethnographic accounts, dating from the period ca. 1870-ca. 1922 – that is, recorded during the fifty years preceding the publication of Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown’s The Andaman Islanders (1922). Produced by 220 authors belonging to various national research traditions and written in various languages, these were fieldwork-based monographs “on a single group or various groups within a relatively circumscribed cultural region” and “compilations of oral texts, or corpora inscriptionum” (Vermeulen and Rosa 2022: 476).

In order to complement and enlarge Rosa and Vermeulen’s bibliography of the period 1870-1922, we propose to prepare a bibliography of ethnographic works written or published in the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). While this period partly overlaps with that of Rosa and Vermeulen and adopts their transnational perspective, it significantly expands their timeframe. Accordingly, we will consider works written by English- and non-English-speaking authors, belonging to the most diverse national research traditions, and include works resulting from their authors’ empirical research in the field, either at home or abroad, both overseas and in Europe. Moreover, since the history of the term ethnography reveals that equating ethnography with fieldwork leads to a marginalization of “other kinds of Völker-Beschreibung (description of peoples and nations), from statistical questionnaires to armchair compilations” (Vermeulen and Rosa 2022: 476), we also take into account library studies, whose descriptive and comparative data on “peoples and nations” were culled from firsthand reports by travelers and other categories of in situ observers.

Such a vast bibliographical endeavor, aiming at a comprehensive but inevitably selective inventory of the ethnographic archive, can best be realized as a collaborative project. We are therefore launching a Call for References. We invite researchers to share references of ethnographic accounts recorded during the long nineteenth century, either based on firsthand observation or compiled by so called “armchair anthropologists” who derived their empirical data from published and/or manuscript sources. All contributions will be credited in the list of contributors associated to the final version of our bibliography. The underlying assumption of this collective and collaborative pursuit will be that early ethnographies, though long neglected and sidelined, are “a fundamental part of the history of ethnography and anthropology” (Vermeulen and Rosa 2022: 476).

The Research Project “Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century” will unfold over a 3-year period ending in 2026 and will result in the publication of a selected bibliography of ethnographic accounts and a special issue or an edited volume collecting the results.

Divided into four stages, the project is designed as follows:

  • A Call for References will be issued in March 2024, followed by a Call for Papers in May 2024;
  • A Conference will be held on 6 December 2024 to present and discuss case studies;
  • A Workshop will be organized in September 2025 to present and discuss papers;
  • The papers will be included in a special issue or an edited volume to be published in 2026.

The result will be a vital contribution to the history of anthropology and to studies of the ethnographic archive. As part of the first stage, we invite the international community of scholars to communicate bibliographical references from the ethnographic archive dating back to the long nineteenth century, providing perspectives on early ethnographers from European and extra-European traditions, at home or abroad.

Please submit your bibliographical entries to: early.ethnographers@gmail.com. The Call for References will be open until 31 December 2024.

Style samples of entries:

Book:

Haddon, Alfred Cort 1910. History of Anthropology. London: Watt’s & Co.

Article in journal:

Tylor, Edward Burnett 1884. “How the Problems of American Anthropology Present Themselves to the English Mind.” Science, vol. 4, pp. 545-551.

Article in book:

Stocking, George Ward, Jr. 1983. “The Ethnographer’s Magic: Fieldwork in British Anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski.” In George Ward Stocking, Jr. (ed.) The Ethnographer’s Magic: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 70-120.

References Cited

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland and Finn Sivert Nielsen 2013. A History of Anthropology. 2nd ed. London: Pluto Press (1st ed. 2001).

Gardner, Helen and Robert Kenny 2016. “Before the Field: Colonial Anthropology Reassessed.” Oceania, vol. 86, issue 3, pp. 218-224.

Haddon, Alfred Cort 1910. History of Anthropology. London: Watt’s & Co (2nd rev. ed. 1934; 3rd impression 1949).

Harris, Marvin 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Malinowski, Bronislaw Kaspar 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Preface by Sir James George Frazer. London: George Routledge & Sons.

Rosa, Frederico Delgado and Han F. Vermeulen (eds.) 2022a. Ethnographers Before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922. Foreword by Thomas Hylland Eriksen. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books (EASA Series 44).

Rosa, Frederico Delgado and Han F. Vermeulen 2022b. “Online Interactive Archive: Ethnographic Monographs before Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1870-1922)” in History of Anthropology Review 46 (2022), Online 21 November 2022: https://histanthro.org/bibliography/ethnographic-monographs/ [introducing an expandable research bibliography of 365 monographs by 220 ethnographers working in the fifty years preceding the publication of Malinowski’s classic monograph, 1870-1922.]

———. 2022c. “Opening the Archive: Selected Bibliography of Ethnographic Accounts, ca. 1870-1922” in Bérose – Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l’anthropologie, Paris. 31 pp. Online 23 November 2022. https://www.berose.fr/article2716.html

Sera-Shriar, Efram 2011. “Observing ‘Man’ in situ: Edward Burnett Tylor’s Travels through Mexico.” History of Anthropology Newsletter, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 3-8.

——— 2013. The Making of British Anthropology, 1813-1871. London: Pickering & Chatto.

——— 2015. “Arctic Observers: Richard King, Monogenism and the Historicisation of Inuit through Travel Narratives.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 51, pp. 23-31.

Sibeud, Emmanuelle 2002. Une Science impériale pour l’Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France, 1878-1930. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS.

Stocking, George Ward, Jr. (ed.) 1971. “What’s in a Name? The Origins of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1837-1871.” Man (n.s.) vol. 6, issue 3: 369-390.

——— 1983. “The Ethnographer’s Magic: Fieldwork in British Anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski.” In George Ward Stocking Jr. (ed.) The Ethnographer’s Magic: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 70-120.

——— 1984. “Qu’est-ce qui est en jeu dans un nom? (‘What’s in a Name?’ II). La ‘Société d’Ethnographie’ et l’historiographie de l’‘anthropologie’ en France.” In: Britta Rupp-Eisenreich (ed.) Histoires de l’Anthropologie (XVIe-XIXe siècles). Paris: Klincksieck, pp. 421-431.

——— 1987. Victorian Anthropology. New York: The Free Press.

——— 1995. After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Tylor, Edward Burnett1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. 2 vols. London: John Murray. German translation 1873.

——— 1884. “How the Problems of American Anthropology Present Themselves to the English Mind.” Science, vol. 4, pp. 545-551.

Urry, James 1973. “Notes and Queries on Anthropology and the Development of Field Methods in British Anthropology, 1870-1920”. Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, issue 1972, pp. 45-57.

Vermeulen, Han F. 2015. Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment. Lincoln and London, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology).

Vermeulen, Han F. and Frederico Delgado Rosa 2022. “Appendix. Selected Bibliography of Ethnographic Accounts, ca. 1870-1922.” In: Frederico Delgado Rosa and Han F. Vermeulen (eds.) Ethnographers Before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 474-501.

From Subfield to Field: The First Histories of Anthropologies International Conference

January 30, 2024 /

Anthropologists habitually regard the history of anthropology as a “subfield,” a hobby for retired anthropologists. Yet the first “Histories of Anthropologies International Conference” (HOAIC), taking place online, December 4–7, 2023, with the support of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) and the University of Pisa, Italy, shows that this is an outdated view: the subfield has become a genuine and lively field in its own right.

The conference was organized by HOAN convenors Fabiana Dimpflmeier (University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy) and Hande Birkalan-Gedik (Goethe University, Germany). They were supported by ten stakeholders in this growing field, including HAR and the HOA Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association; History of Anthropology Working Groups in the US (CHSTM) and Germany (DGSKA); the Historical Approaches to Cultural Analysis Working Group (HACA) of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF); the Royal Anthropological Institute in London; the International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology BEROSE in Paris; as well as three book series: “Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology” and the “Histories of Anthropology Annual” (both University of Nebraska Press), and “Anthropology’s Ancestors” (Berghahn Books).

The European initiative updates efforts in the US, the UK and elsewhere to professionalize the history of anthropology as a subject worth pursuing internationally. Fifty years ago, George W. Stocking, Jr. established the History of Anthropology Newsletter in Chicago. He and several colleagues used the logo “HoA” (History of Anthropology) on the cover of the first HAN, in the Fall of 1973. This newsletter went digital in Pennsylvania in June 2016, to be soon converted into the History of Anthropology Review (HAR). That same year, the History of Anthropology Network (HOAN) was founded at the EASA conference in Milan in July 2016, and the online encyclopedia BEROSE was refounded in Paris in September 2016. Since then, the field has become dynamic and transnational. HAR and BEROSE have been very productive, publishing articles and volumes online and in print. And now, at the initiative of HOAN convenors, key stakeholders in the history of anthropology came together for an online conference in virtual Pisa, which produced nine scholarly panels, one roundtable, two keynotes, and many conversations. Out of a total of 133 submitted papers, 98 were accepted and 87 were actually presented. They provoked lively discussions, online, with hundreds of conversations that were managed and recorded with the technical assistance of NomadIT. The recordings are now available online.

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Online Interactive Archive: Ethnographic Monographs before Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1870–1922)

November 21, 2022 / and / 5 Comments

This article introduces an expandable research bibliography of over 365 monographs by 220 ethnographers working in the fifty years preceding the publication of Malinowski’s classic 1922 monograph, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, in the years between 1870 to 1922.

An earlier version of this text and resource was published as “Appendix: Selected Bibliography of Ethnographic Accounts, 1870–1922” in Frederico Delgado Rosa and Han F. Vermeulen, eds., Ethnographers Before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870–1922, EASA Series 44 (New York: Berghahn, 2022), 474–501. For a wide-ranging discussion of this book (with the participation of Sophie Chevalier, Barbara Chambers Dawson, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Michael Kraus, Adam Kuper, Herbert S. Lewis, Andrew Lyons, David Mills, David Shankland, James Urry, and Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt), please see this link at BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: “Before and After Malinowski: Alternative Views on the History of Anthropology [A Virtual Round Table at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 7 July 2022].”

Those wishing to share their knowledge of further references—i.e. ethnographic monographs published in book form or of book length (over 100 pages) in the period 1870–1922 or resulting from fieldwork carried out in the same period—are cordially invited to participate. Please either contact the authors or add the bibliographical information directly in the “Leave a Comment” box at the end of this page.

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History of Anthropology Panels at EASA 2018: Conference Report

November 29, 2018 /


From 14-17 August 2018, Stockholm University in Sweden hosted the 15th biennial conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). This year’s conference included four panels on the history of anthropology, as well as one session on a fifth panel, for a total of 38 papers on different aspects of the field’s history. This large number of papers suggests an upsurge of interest in the subject in Europe and worldwide. Since its reactivation in 2016, EASA’s History of Anthropology Network (HOAN) has aimed at facilitating this process, and its membership has nearly doubled since early 2017. All panels on the history of anthropology during this EASA conference were convened by members of HOAN; two of the panels were organized under the auspices of this network. Continue reading

History of Anthropology and a Name Change at the German Ethnological Society Meeting in Berlin: Conference Report

February 22, 2018 / / 1 Comment


The 12th History of Anthropology workshop took place during the biannual conference of the German Ethnological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde, DGV) at the Free University of Berlin on October 5, 2017. Convened around the theme “From the History of Anthropology to its Future: Historical, Moral, and Political Affinities,” the workshop was organized by Peter Schweitzer (Vienna, Austria) and the present author. It featured seven papers out of sixteen submissions, as well as a keynote address (see program under “Workshop 17”). Continue reading

Editors’ Introduction: Fields, Furrows, and Landmarks in the History of Anthropology

October 21, 2017 / , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and


In 1973, the first issue of the History of Anthropology Newsletter opened with a statement of purpose from the editorial committee, called “Prospects and Problems,” by George Stocking. The editors were self-consciously defining and claiming a field. They let loose with territorial metaphors: occupation, soil, furrows, forays. Now, as we continue our relaunch of HAN, we return to this 40-year-old manifesto as a starting point for thinking about the past, present, and future of the field.

The 1973 essay noted a sense of disciplinary crisis as a spur to growth; it asked whether this history should be done by anthropologists, intellectual historians on “one-book forays,” by “anthropologists manqué,” or by a new generation of interdisciplinarians; it announced the need for “landmarks” including lists of archival holdings, bibliographic aids, research in progress, recent publications—which HAN would provide. It ended with a call for participation from readers.

Seeking to continue HAN’s role as a site for debating the field’s present state and shaping its future, in late 2016 we invited a series of scholars from various fields to respond to this manifesto. In February 2017, eight distinguished authors responded with generosity, insight, experience, good humor—and impressive speed. Continuing our reappraisal of Stocking’s inaugural editorial statement, in August 2017 we added nine additional surveys of the field’s potential terrain. These contributions covered new ground, unearthed skepticisms, and sowed a set of new questions. Now, in October 2017, we close the series with a third set of reflections from an impressive group of early career scholars. They imply a rich future for the study of anthropology’s past.

We encourage HAN readers and subscribers to make use of the comments section to respond to individual pieces, or to the section as a whole. Dig in and leave a mark.

This editorial was originally published on February 1, 2017. It was updated on August 15, 2017 and on October 21, 2017.

Special Focus: Fields, Furrows, and Landmarks in the History of Anthropology

October 20, 2017 / , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and


Read the full Focus Section here.

History of Anthropology Panels at the 14th Biennial EASA Conference, Milan, Italy, July 20-23, 2016 and the Refounding of HOAN

April 5, 2017 /


The 14th biennial EASA conference was held at the University of Milano-Bicocca from July 20-23, 2016. Framed around the topic “Anthropological Legacies and Human Futures,” the conference included two panels on themes in the history of anthropology. The first panel was convened by David Shankland (Royal Anthropological Institute, London, UK) and Aleksandar Boskovic (University of Belgrade/Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia); the second by Andrés Barrera-González (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and Han F. Vermeulen. The second panel was the official panel of the Europeanist network for this conference. The panels were attended by between 30 and 40 people and received positive reactions. Based on the success of the conference, plans were made to publish one or more volumes. Subsequently, a network devoted to the history of anthropology (HOAN) was refounded (see below). Continue reading

History of Anthropology: Why, How, and For Whom?

February 24, 2017 /


Under the title “Why History of Anthropology and Who Should Write It?” the History of Anthropology Working Group of the German Anthropological Association (DGV) organized a two-day conference on “Cultural and Social Anthropology and its Relation to its own History and to the Historical Sciences” at the University of Vienna (Austria) on December 9–10, 2016. Peter Schweitzer, Marie-France Chevron, and Peter Rohrbacher, staff members of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, convened the conference. The central questions they formulated were: (1) “To what end should a history of anthropology be written,” (2) Is there “a ‘best practice’ for this form of historiography,” and (3) “For whom should a history of anthropology be written”? Continue reading

The History of Anthropology Between Expansion and Pluralism

February 1, 2017 / / 1 Comment


The history of anthropology is coming of age as a worldwide pursuit. After its early stages in the 1960s and 1970s with the Conference on the History of Anthropology (1962), inspired by A. Irving Hallowell and sponsored by the Social Science Research Council in New York, and the History of Anthropology Newsletter (HAN), published by an editorial committee of seven and edited by George W. Stocking, Jr. in Chicago from 1973 on, the field has clearly expanded both in the USA and elsewhere. The digital HAN, launched as a website in June 2016, counts 350 subscribers and the History of Anthropology Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) has 175 members. The World Anthropologies Network (WAN), founded in Brazil in 2002–03, focuses on non-hegemonic histories of anthropology. In France there was sufficient interest to publish the journal Gradhiva twice a year from 1986 on; an online encyclopedia on the history of anthropology and ethnography, named Bérose, is now being restructured by a founding team of 15 researchers and is expanding internationally to include new collaborators. In the United Kingdom the Royal Anthropological Institute is investigating its history by means of annual conferences and plans to publish four volumes. In the German-speaking countries a Working Group on the History of Anthropology has been meeting within the German Anthropological Association biannually from 1993 on. In Russia some 30 scholars regularly present papers on the subject during the biannual congresses of Russian ethnographers and anthropologists. In Europe as a whole the newly founded History of Anthropology Network (HOAN) was established within the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) in November 2016; it now has 85 members and counting. Continue reading

Publication Information

The History of Anthropology Review became an online publication with volume 40 in 2016, and changed its title from History of Anthropology Newsletter to History of Anthropology Review on October 18, 2019. Content is updated continually, and subscribers receive weekly emails with links to new content.

 

HAR is based at the Department of History and Sociology of Science, 303 Claudia Cohen Hall, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304. Fax: 215-573-2231.

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